The problem with network-level stock
A chain of thirty pharmacies looks well stocked when you add everything up. Look by lot and by pharmacy and the picture changes: a lot of a sun-care reference expiring in eight weeks sits in a pharmacy that sells two units a month, while a coastal pharmacy will run out of the same reference in ten days. Nobody sees it, because the spreadsheet shows total stock and the ERP shows lots only when you open the receipt.
What a lot-aware process looks like
- Stock by lot and expiry date per pharmacy, refreshed from the ERP several times a day.
- Sell-through by lot: how many units of this lot will this pharmacy sell before the expiry date, given its own forecast?
- An alert when the answer is 'not all of them', early enough to act: twelve weeks for slow categories, six for fast ones.
- A transfer proposal to the pharmacy that will sell the remaining units in time, created as a transfer order in the ERP.
- A write-off report that shows what expired, where, and why, so the next order is smaller in the right place.
Seasonality makes it worse
Parapharmacy demand is strongly seasonal: sun care in summer, cold and flu products in winter, allergy products in spring. A lot that arrives at the end of the season will not sell until next year, and by then it has expired. Seasonal profiles per category, learned from history, keep the last orders of the season small and push the transfer alerts earlier.
How IRIS handles it
IRIS tracks stock by lot with expiry dates, computes sell-through per lot and pharmacy from the forecast, and raises alerts and transfer proposals before a lot becomes unsellable. Order proposals per pharmacy integrate seasonal profiles and the remaining shelf life of stock already in the network. Prescription medicine rules stay in your pharmacy software; IRIS covers parapharmacy, OTC and dermo-cosmetics.
Key takeaway
Manage stock by lot and by pharmacy, alert on sell-through before expiry, and transfer rather than write off.